include() problem

This may sound dumb, but i have been up all night going through php/apache docs, and still have not found an answer.. Throughout a site i need to include files that are scattered in subdirs, sometimes up in the dir tree, sometimes down. Bad design i know but i have to live w/ it... Problem is in the way Apache/PHP see stuff. If i include /somefile.htm in html, it means somefile.htm wich is at site root dir. In PHP it looks like it means somefile.htm at SERVER root dir. I can use getcwd() and go around truncating/adding to the string until i get a path to use with set_include_path() to add the site root dir to the include path, but it just seems wrong to waste cycles doing it... So, question is, is there a more direct/elegant way to add the site root (or any other dir for that matter) to the include path? TIA Nuno Trancoso